Chapter 8

Get in Tune(s): Audio on Your iPhone

In This Chapter

Checking out your iPhone’s inner iPod

Bossing your tunes around

Having it your way: Tailoring your audio experience

As we mention elsewhere in this book, your iPhone is one of the best iPods ever — especially for working with audio and video. In this chapter, we show you how to use your iPhone to listen to music and other audio content; in Chapter 10, we cover video.

We start with a quick tour of the iPhone’s Music app. Then we look at how to listen to music on your iPhone. After you’re nice and comfy with using it this way, we show you how to customize your listening experience so that it’s just the way you like it. Then we offer a few tips to help you get the most out of using your iPhone as an audio player. Finally, we show you how to use the iTunes app to buy music, audiobooks, videos, and more, and how to download free content.

We assume that you already synced your iPhone with your computer or with iCloud and that your iPhone contains audio content — songs, podcasts, or audiobooks. If you don’t have any audio on your iPhone yet, we humbly suggest that you get some (flip to Chapter 3 and follow the instructions for syncing, or launch the iTunes Store app and buy a song or download a free podcast) before you read the rest of this chapter.

Okay, now that you have some audio content on your iPhone to play with, are you ready to rock?

Introducing the iPod inside Your iPhone

To use your iPhone as an iPod, just tap the Music icon in the lower-right corner of the Home screen. At the bottom of the screen that appears, you should see five icons: Radio, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and More.

If you don’t see these icons, tap the back icon in the upper-left corner of the screen (the one that looks like a little arrow pointing to the left). Or, if you’re holding your iPhone sideways (the long edges are parallel to the ground), rotate it 90 degrees so that it’s upright (the short edges are parallel to the ground).

You’ll understand why your iPhone’s orientation matters when you read the later section “Going with the (Cover) Flow.”

iTunes Radio

If you’ve ever listened to a streaming radio service such as Pandora, Spotify, or Radical.fm, you will grok Apple’s new iTunes Radio immediately.

In a nutshell, iTunes Radio features more than 300 DJ-curated and genre-focused streaming radio stations. You can also create your own stations based on music you love. The more you listen to and fine-tune the stations — by tapping the Play More Like This or Never Play This Song button (you’ll hear more on these important buttons in just a moment), the more you’ll like what the station plays for you next. iTunes Radio isn’t perfect, but the more you tap, the better it gets at predicting what you’ll like.

Did we mention that iTunes Radio is available on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC, and Apple TV for free? You’ll hear the occasional ad, but if you subscribe to iTunes Match (as Bob does, for a mere $24.99 a year), you can listen without ads.

With iTunes Match, you can store up to 25,000 songs in the cloud; read more about it at www.dummies.com/extras/iphone.

By now you’re surely ready to start listening, so tap the Music icon on your iPhone’s dock, and then tap the Radio icon at the bottom of the screen. To listen to a premade station, tap a featured station, as shown in Figure 8-1.

Swipe left on the featured stations to see additional choices. Or tap the red New button or the big red + icon to start a station of your own.

If you’ve created more than two stations, you’ll have to scroll down to see the big red +. (We created only one station — Born to Run Radio — in Figure 8-1 so you could see the + icon.)

Moving right along, if you tap a featured station, a song will begin playing immediately. If you tap New (or the red +), you’ll be asked to search for an artist, a genre, or a song. Tap an artist, a song, or a genre (or any combination), and your station will be created based on your choice.

So that’s how you start listening to iTunes Radio. But if you want stations you create to play more songs you’ll like, you need to fine-tune the stations. When a song you love or hate is playing, just tap the little star to the left of the play/pause icon, as shown in Figure 8-2, left.

Three options slide up from the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 8-2, right. If you love the song, tap the first or third option (or both). (The star turns red, as shown in Figure 8-2, when you choose Play More Like This.) If you hate it, tap Never Play This Song, and you’ll never hear it again (at least not on this station). When you’re done, tap Cancel.

Rant on: You tap Cancel even if you’ve tapped one of the options. That’s just wrong. There should be a Done or Save button to save your selection(s), and a Cancel button to return to the previous screen without making any changes. In this case, you tap Cancel to return to the previous screen and your choices are saved anyway. It’s been this way since iOS 7. Weird? You be the judge.

Note that you can’t fine-tune songs played on featured stations; you can add them to your wish list, but you can’t select Play More Like This or Never Play This Song for them.

What you can do — and this works with songs on both featured and custom stations — is tap the little i-in-a-circle near the top to display the song’s Info screen, as shown in Figure 8-3.

The Info screen lets you start a new station from the artist or song that’s playing, allow or disallow explicit content on the station, and share the station with friends via the usual methods.

The Tune This Station slider shown in Figure 8-3 appears only for custom stations; you can’t tune a featured station (though you can start your own custom station based on a song or an artist you hear on a Featured station). You can also tap the song title (“The Great Gig in the Sky” in Figure 8-3) to see all the tracks on the album in the iTunes Store, or tap the price ($1.29 in the figure) to purchase the track that’s playing.

When you’re finished with the Info screen, tap the Done button in the upper-right corner to return to the Now Playing screen.

Last but not least, tap the red Edit button to the left of My Stations (refer to Figure 8-1) to rename the station; add artists, songs, or genres; or delete the station from your device(s).

Deleting a station on your iPhone deletes the station everywhere: from your Mac or PC, Apple TV, and other iDevices. If you’ve put a lot of time and effort into fine-tuning a station, think twice before you delete it because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

And that, friends, is pretty much all you need to know to use and enjoy featured stations and create and fine-tune your very own custom radio stations.

Playlists

Playlists let you create and organize collections of songs. Create playlists around a particular theme or mood: opera arias, romantic ballads, British invasion, or whatever. Or make playlists of your favorite albums, favorite songs of all times, or greatest hits collections. (Younger folks sometimes call playlists mixes.)

Tap the Playlists icon at the bottom of the screen to display your playlists. If you don’t have any playlists on your iPhone, don’t sweat it. Just know that if you had some, this is where they’d be.

Tap a playlist and a list of the songs it contains appears. If the list is longer than one screen, flick upward to scroll down. Tap a song in the list and it plays. Or tap Shuffle Playlist (at the top of the list) to hear a song at random from the playlist; all subsequent songs will then play at random.

That’s all there is to selecting and playing songs from your playlists.

As you see in Chapter 3, you can sync playlists with iTunes on your computer. It’s also generally easier to create playlists in iTunes than on your iPhone.

Although it may be easiest to create playlists in iTunes on your computer, this is an iPhone book, so we show you how to create playlists in the Music app on your iPhone:

1. Tap the Music icon.
2. At the bottom of the screen, tap the Playlists icon.

   If you’ve replaced Playlists with another icon, tap More and then tap Playlists.

3. Tap the second item in the list, Add Playlist.
4. Type a name for your new playlist, and then tap Save.

   An alphabetical list of all songs on your iPhone appears. Note the little + that appears to the right of each song.

5. Tap the + next to a song name to add the song to your playlist.

   To add all these songs to your playlist, tap the + next to the first item in the list: Add All Songs.

6. In the upper-right corner, tap the Done button.

If you create a playlist on your iPhone and then sync with your computer, that playlist remains on the iPhone and will also appear in iTunes on your computer.

The playlists remain until you delete them in iTunes or on your iPhone. To remove a playlist in iTunes, select the playlist’s name in the source list and then press Delete or Backspace. To remove a playlist on your iPhone, swipe from left to right across the playlist and then tap the red Delete button.

You can also edit playlists on your iPhone. To do so, tap the Playlists icon at the bottom of the screen (or tap More and then tap Playlists), and then tap the playlist you want to edit. Three buttons appear near the top of the screen — Edit, Clear, and Delete — with the songs in the playlist listed below them.

Tap Clear to remove all the songs from this playlist; tap Delete to delete this playlist from your iPhone. Or tap Edit to do any (or all) of the following:

• Move a song up or down in the playlist: A little icon with three gray bars appears to the right of each song. Drag the icon up to move the song higher in the list or drag down to move the song lower in the list.
• Add more songs to the playlist: Tap the + icon in the upper-left corner.
• Delete a song from the playlist: Tap the – sign to the left of the song name. Note that deleting a song from the playlist doesn’t remove the song from your iPhone.

When you finish editing, tap the Done button near the top of the screen. And that’s all there is to creating and managing playlists on your iPhone.

Artistic license

Now we tell you how to find and play a song ordered by artist name rather than by playlist. Tap the Artists icon at the bottom of the screen and an alphabetical list of artists appears.

If the list is longer than one screen (which it probably is), flick upward to scroll down or flick downward to scroll up. An easier way to find an artist is to tap one of the little letters on the right side of the screen, to jump directly to artists whose names start with that letter. In Figure 8-4, for example, that letter is B. As you can see, those letters on the right are extremely small, so unless you have tiny fingers, you may have to settle for a letter close to the one you want or for tapping several times until you select the correct one.

Our technical editor for previous editions, the late Dennis Cohen, suggested that using a stylus instead of your finger may help. He was probably right.

But there’s an even easier way to find an artist — or a song, an album, or a music compilation, for that matter — tell Siri what you want to hear. All you have to do is ask (see “Using your voice to control your music,” later in this chapter, for details).

If Siri isn’t a viable option for you, you can still achieve the same effect manually: Scroll to the very top of the list or tap the tiny magnifying glass (above the A) in the list of letters on the right. Then tap in the search field at the top of the screen to activate the virtual keyboard. Now type the name of the artist (or whatever you’re looking for) and then tap the Search button.

If you tap an artist’s name in the list of search results, one of two things occurs:

• If you have songs from more than one album by an artist in your music library: A list of albums and the songs they contain appears, as shown in Figure 8-5. Tap a song to play it. Or tap the first item in the list of albums — Shuffle All Songs (not shown in Figure 8-5) — to hear all songs on all albums by that artist at random.
• If all songs in your music library by that artist are on the same album or aren’t associated with a specific album: A list of all songs by that artist appears.

Either way, tap a song and the music starts.

Song selection

Now we tell you how to find a song by its title and play it. Tap the Songs icon at the bottom of the screen and a list of songs appears. You find songs the same ways you find artists: Flick upward or downward to scroll; use the search field at the top of the list; or tap a little letter on the right side of the screen.

If you’re not sure which song you want to listen to, try this: Tap the shuffle icon, which is at the top of the list between the search field and the first song title (and also shown in the margin). Your iPhone will now play songs from your music library at random.

You can find songs (or artists, albums, compilations, and more for that matter) also by typing a Spotlight search, as we mention in Chapter 2. Or try Bob’s favorite way to find music: Ask Siri to play the song, artist, genre, or album you want to hear as described in the “Using your voice to control your music” section, later in this chapter.

Share and share alike

One of our favorite features on the iPhone has always been Home Sharing, which lets you use your iPhone to stream music, movies, TV shows, and other media content from the iTunes library on your Mac or PC.

iOS 8 introduces a new kind of sharing called Family Sharing, which lets you share purchases from iTunes, iBooks, and the App Store with up to six people in your family without having to share account information. Now you can pay for family purchases with the same credit card and approve kids’ spending right from your iPhone or iPad. Here’s the scoop on both types of sharing: Home and Family.

Home Sharing feature

Turn on Home Sharing to stream music, movies, TV shows, and other media from your computer to your iPhone. The big gotcha here is that Home Sharing is available only if your iPhone and your computer are on the same Wi-Fi network and use the same Apple ID.

To make Home Sharing work for you, first enable it on your computer, and then enable it on your iPhone. To set up Home Sharing on your computer, launch iTunes and then Choose File⇒Home Sharing⇒Turn on Home Sharing. Type your Apple ID and password in the appropriate fields and click the Turn On Home Sharing button. From now on, as long as iTunes is open, your iTunes library will be available for Home Sharing on your Wi-Fi network.

To enable Home Sharing on your iPhone, open the Settings app and tap Music (or Videos). Scroll down to the Home Sharing section and type the same Apple ID and password you used on the computer, and then tap Return.

Now, tap the ellipsis (…) icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen and then tap Shared. A list of libraries with Home Sharing enabled appears. Tap the library you want to enable. After a while (a large library may take a while to load), a check mark appears next to the library’s name and the list disappears.

Here’s where it gets cool: Tap one of the icons at the bottom of the screen. Rather than seeing only the playlists, artists, and songs you’ve synced with your iPhone, you’ll now see the playlists, artists, songs, albums, and everything else in the iTunes library on the Home Sharing computer as well. And you’ll continue to see the shared content in the Music app as long as your iPhone remains connected to the Wi-Fi network.

To switch back to seeing just the music synced to your iPhone, reverse the process and disable Home Sharing in Settings⇒Music (or Settings⇒Video).

Movies and TV shows shared via Home Sharing don’t appear in the Music app. Look for them in the Videos app, as described in Chapter 10.

Home Sharing is simple, elegant, and free. If you’ve never used this feature, what are you waiting for?

Family Sharing feature

New in iOS 8, Family Sharing lets up to six members of the same family share everything they buy at the iTunes, iBooks, and App Stores. It also provides sharing of family photos and a family calendar, location sharing, and more.

To set up Family Sharing, one adult in the household (known as the family organizer) invites up to five family members to join and agrees to pay for all iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases those family members initiate while part of Family Sharing.

When any family member buys an app, a song, an album, a movie, or an iBook, it is billed directly to the family organizer’s account. The item is then added to the purchaser’s account and shared with the rest of the family. The organizer can turn on Ask to Buy for any family member to require approval for any purchase. When a purchase is initiated, a notification is sent to the family organizer, who can review the item and approve or decline the request from his or her iPhone.

The fine print says: You can be part of only one family group at a time and may switch to a different family group only twice per year. The features of Family Sharing may vary based on country and content eligibility.

Family Sharing requires iCloud, and works with the following software and operating systems: iOS 8, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Find My Friends 3.0, Find My iPhone 3.1, and iCloud for Windows 4.0.

To become the family organizer, open Settings, tap iCloud, and then tap Set Up Family Sharing.

After you enable Family Sharing, all family members have immediate access to each other’s music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps, so you can download whatever you want with a tap anytime you like without anyone having to share an Apple ID or password.

Taking Control of Your Tunes

Now that you have the basics down, take a look at some other things you can do with the Music app.

Going with the (Cover) Flow

Finding tracks by playlist, artist, or song is cool, but finding them with Cover Flow is even cooler. Cover Flow lets you browse your music collection by its album artwork. To use Cover Flow, turn your iPhone sideways (long edges parallel to the ground). Cover Flow fills the screen, as shown in Figure 8-6.

Flipping through your cover art in Cover Flow is simple. Just flick your finger left or right on the screen and the covers go flying by. Flick or drag quickly and the covers whiz past; flick or drag slowly and the covers move leisurely.

Try it — you’ll like it! Here’s how to put Cover Flow to work for you:

• To see tracks (songs) on an album: Tap the cover, and it grows to fill half the screen, with a list of the album tracks in the other half.
• To play a track: Tap the track name in the list. If the list is long, scroll by dragging or flicking up and down on it.
• To go back to Cover Flow: Tap the cover art again.
• To play or pause the current song: Tap any cover and then tap the play/pause icon below its cover art.

If no cover art exists for an album in your collection, the iPhone displays a plain-black wrapper with the album name in the middle.

And that, friends, is all there is to the Music app’s cool Cover Flow.

Flow’s not here right now

As you see earlier in this chapter, when you hold your iPhone vertically (the short edges are parallel to the ground) and tap the Playlists, Artists, or Songs icon, you see a list rather than Cover Flow.

Along the same lines, when you’re listening to music, the controls you see are different depending on which way you hold your iPhone. When you hold your iPhone vertically, as shown in Figure 8-7, you see controls that don’t appear when you hold your iPhone sideways. Furthermore, the controls you see when viewing the Playlists, Artists, or Songs lists are slightly different from the controls you see when a song is playing.

Here’s another cool side effect of holding your iPhone vertically: If you add lyrics to a song in iTunes on your computer (by selecting the song, choosing File⇒Get Info, and then pasting or typing the lyrics into the Lyrics tab in the Info window), the lyrics are displayed along with the cover art.

Here’s how to use the controls that appear when the iPhone is vertical:

• Back icon: Tap to return to whichever list you used last — Playlists, Artists, or Songs.
• Switch to track list icon: Tap to switch to a list of tracks.
• Repeat button: Tap and the Repeat Song, Repeat All, and Repeat Off options appear. If you then tap Repeat All or Repeat Song, the Repeat button changes to read Repeat All or Repeat Song, respectively, and is highlighted in pink as a cue that repeat is enabled.

  If you don’t see the Repeat button, scrubber bar, and Shuffle button, tap the album cover once to make them appear.

• Scrubber bar: Drag the little red line (the playhead) along the scrubber bar to skip to any point within the song.
• Create button: Tap it and the Genius Playlist, New Station from Artist, and New Station from Song options appear. The last two options start a new radio station from the selected song or artist, as described earlier in the chapter. The first option, Genius Playlist, presents up to 25 songs that iTunes thinks will go great with the song that’s playing.

  The Genius isn’t all that smart about a lot of things. For example, the less popular the song, artist, or genre you select, the more likely your so-called Genius will present a dialog that says, “Try again. This song doesn’t have enough related songs to create a Genius playlist.”

  At the top of the Genius playlist, you find three buttons:

  • New: Select a different song to use as the basis for a Genius playlist.
  • Refresh: See a list of up to 25 other songs that go great with the song you’re listening to, at least according to iTunes.
  • Save: Save this Genius playlist so that you can listen to it whenever you like.

  If you like the Genius feature, you can also create a Genius playlist by tapping the Playlists icon at the bottom of the screen and then tapping Genius, which is the first item in the list of playlists.

• Shuffle button: Tap once to shuffle songs and play them in random order. The button turns pink when shuffling is enabled. Tap it again to play songs in order again. The button goes back to its original color — gray.

  You can also shuffle tracks in any list of songs — such as playlists or albums — by tapping Shuffle, which appears at the top of the list. Regardless of whether the Shuffle button has been tapped, this technique always plays songs in that list in random order. And, as you see later in this chapter, the Shake to Shuffle option, when enabled, lets you shake your iPhone from side-to-side to shuffle and play a different song at random.

• Restart/previous track/rewind icon: Tap once to go to the beginning of the track. Tap twice to go to the start of the preceding track in the list. Touch and hold down this icon to rewind the song at double speed.
• Play/pause icon: Tap to play or pause the song.
• Next track/fast forward icon: Tap to skip to the next track in the list. Touch and hold down this icon to fast-forward through the song at double speed.
• AirPlay selector icon: You may or may not see the AirPlay selector icon (shown in the margin) in the Control Center on your iPhone (it’s not visible in Figure 8-7). AirPlay lets you stream content wirelessly over Wi-Fi from your iPhone to any AirPlay-enabled device. Check out the “Playing with AirPlay” sidebar for the details.
• Volume control: Drag the little dot left or right to reduce or increase the volume level.

If you’re using the headset included with your iPhone, you can squeeze the mic to pause, and squeeze it again to play. You can also squeeze it twice in rapid succession to skip to the next song. Sweet! When you tap the switch to track list icon, the iPhone screen fills with the tracks in the current list (albums, playlists, or artists, for example). A little red volume level meter appears before the song currently playing (or paused). Tap any song in a track list to play it.

You can also rate the current track from zero to five stars by tapping the Rating button at the top of the screen. Five dots appear below the selected track; tap or slide on them and the dots magically turn into stars.

And that, gentle reader, is all you need to know to enjoy listening to music (and podcasts and audiobooks) on your iPhone.

Customizing Your Audio Experience

In this section, we cover some Music features designed to make your listening experience more enjoyable.

Finding even more choices

If you prefer to browse your audio collection by criteria other than playlist, artist, or song, you can tap the More (ellipsis) icon in the lower-right corner of the screen. The More list appears. Tap your choice — albums, audiobooks, genres, compilations, or composers — and you’ll see your audio collection organized by your criterion.

Wait — there’s more. You can swap out the Radio, Playlists, Artists, and Songs icons at the bottom of the screen for ones that better suit your needs. For example, if you listen to a lot of audiobooks and rarely listen to iTunes Radio, you might want to replace the Radio icon with an Audiobooks icon. Here’s how:

1. In the lower-right corner of the screen, tap the More icon.
2. In the upper-left corner of the screen, tap the Edit button.
3. Drag the replacement icon right onto the icon at the bottom of the screen that you want to replace.

   You can replace the four icons at the bottom of the screen with Albums, Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, or Genres.

4. (Optional) Rearrange the first four icons by dragging them to the left or right (you can’t move the More icon).
5. When you have everything just the way you like it, tap the Done button to return to the More list.

If you replace one of the icons this way, the item you replaced is available by tapping the More icon and choosing the item in the More list.

Setting preferences

You can change a few preference settings to customize your iPhone-as-an-iPod experience.

Play all songs at the same volume level

The iTunes Sound Check option automatically adjusts the level of songs so that they play at the same volume relative to each other. That way, one song never blasts out your ears even if the recording level is much louder than that of the song before or after it. To tell the iPhone to use these volume settings, you first have to turn on the feature in iTunes on your computer. Here’s how to do that:

1. Choose iTunes⇒Preferences (Mac) or Edit⇒Preferences (PC).
2. Click the Playback tab.
3. Select the Sound Check check box to enable it.

Now, to tell the iPhone to use the Sound Check settings from iTunes: On the iPhone’s Home screen, tap Settings⇒Music⇒Sound Check.

Choose an equalizer setting

An equalizer increases or decreases the relative levels of specific frequencies to enhance the sound you hear. Some equalizer settings emphasize the bass (low end) notes in a song; other equalizer settings make the higher frequencies more apparent. The iPhone has more than a dozen equalizer presets, with names such as Acoustic, Bass Booster, Bass Reducer, Dance, Electronic, Pop, and Rock. Each one is ostensibly tailored to a specific type of music.

The way to find out whether you prefer using equalization is to listen to music while trying out different settings. To do that, first start listening to a song you like. Then, while the song is playing, follow these steps:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings⇒Music⇒EQ.
2. Tap different EQ presets (Pop, Rock, R&B, or Dance, for example), and listen carefully to the way they change how the song sounds.
3. When you find an equalizer preset that you think sounds good, press the Home button and you’re finished.

If you don’t like any of the presets, tap Off at the top of the EQ list to turn off the equalizer.

According to Apple’s iPhone battery information page (www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html), applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life. So you need to decide which is more important to you: using equalization or maximizing battery life.

Set a volume limit for music (and videos)

You can instruct your iPhone to limit the loudest listening level for audio or video. To do so, here’s the drill:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings⇒Music⇒Volume Limit.
2. Drag the slider to adjust the maximum volume level to your liking.
3. (Optional) Tap Lock Volume Limit to assign a four-digit passcode to the setting so that others can’t easily change it.

The Volume Limit setting limits the volume of only music and videos. It doesn’t apply to podcasts or audiobooks. And, although the setting works with any headset, headphones, or speakers plugged into the headset jack on your iPhone, it doesn’t affect sound played on your iPhone’s internal speaker.

Enable the Shake to Shuffle option

Shake to Shuffle does just what its name implies — plays a different song at random when you shake your iPhone. To enable this setting, tap Settings⇒Music and then tap the Shake to Shuffle button. From shake to shuffle — how can you not love that feature?

Setting a sleep timer

If you like to fall asleep with music playing but don’t want to leave your iPhone playing music all night long, you can turn on its sleep timer.

Here’s how:

1. On the Home screen, tap the Clock icon.
2. In the lower-right corner, tap the Timer icon.
3. Set the number of hours and minutes you want music to play, and then tap the When Timer Ends button.
4. Tap the last item in the list, Stop Playing.

   If you don’t see the Stop Playing item, don’t be alarmed (semi-clever wordplay intended). You’re simply looking at the middle (or the beginning) of the list of available alert sounds. To scroll to the bottom of the list and find the elusive Stop Playing item, flick upward on the list a few times.

5. In the upper-right corner, tap the Set button.
6. Tap the big, green Start button.

That’s it! If you have music playing already, you’re finished. If not, press the Home button, tap the Music icon, and select the music you want to listen to as you fall asleep. When the specified time period elapses, the music stops playing and your iPhone goes to sleep. By then, we hope you’re in slumberland as well.

Using your voice to control your music

Here’s something cool: You can boss around your music by using nothing but your voice. Just press and hold down the Home button (or the equivalent button on a headset) and, after you hear the tone, you can:

• Play an album, an artist, or a playlist: Say “Play” and then say “album,” “artist,” or “playlist,” and the name of the album, artist, or playlist, respectively. You can issue these voice commands at any time except when you’re on a phone call or having a FaceTime video chat. In other words, you don’t have to have music playing for these voice commands to work.
• Shuffle the current playlist: Say “Shuffle.” This voice command works only if you’re listening to a playlist.
• Find out more about the song that’s playing: Ask “What’s playing?” “What song is this?” “Who sings this song?” or “Who is this song by?” Again, these commands work only if you’re already listening to music.
• Use Genius to play similar songs: Say “Genius,” “Play more like this,” or “Play more songs like this.” If your iPhone has no Genius playlists and you say “Genius,” your iPhone will politely inform you that “Genius is not available.” The same thing happens if you say “Play more like this” or “Play more songs like this” when no song is playing.

And hey, because your iPod happens to be an iPhone, you won’t look stupid talking to it!

Although we found that controlling your music by speaking works most of the time, in noisy environments the iPhone may mishear your verbal request and start playing the wrong song or artist or try to call someone on the phone. Using the wired headset helps. And syntax counts, so remember to use the exact wording in the list.

In iOS 8, Siri can identify songs playing in the background, just like the Shazam app we rave about in Chapter 17. Just ask Siri, “What song is playing?” and let her listen for a moment. She’ll identify the song if she can — and she even has a sense of humor about it. When we asked her to identify “Come Together” by The Beatles, she replied, “This is The Beatles playing ‘Come Together.’ Right now.”

By the way, Siri’s newfound song-identification prowess is powered by Shazam but doesn’t require you to install the Shazam app. That said, we like all the other bells and whistles that the Shazam app brings to the party enough that we still recommend it in Chapter 17.

Shopping with the iTunes Store app

Last but certainly not least, the iTunes Store app lets you use your iPhone to download, buy, or rent just about anything you can download, buy, or rent with the iTunes application on your Mac or PC, including music, audiobooks, and videos. And, if you’re fortunate enough to have an iTunes gift card or gift certificate in hand, you can redeem it directly from your iPhone.

If you want to do any of those tasks, however, you must first sign in to your iTunes Store account. Tap Settings⇒Store⇒Sign In. Type your username and password, and then tap OK. Or, in the unlikely event that you don’t have an iTunes Store account, tap Settings⇒Store⇒Create New Account, and follow the on-screen instructions.

After the iTunes Store knows who you are (and, more importantly, knows your credit card number, gift card balance, or PayPal info), tap the iTunes Store icon on your Home screen and shop until you drop.